Contingency and humility --- 'God averts/hinders everything'? Is there more to the expression that refers to predictions? It reminds me of the idiom "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip" which suggests that things can still go wrong even in the simplest and surest activity. "Don't count your chicken until they hatch" is another similar idiom. The peasants in your previous idiom will certainly have spoken in similar fashion for there is nothing like the vagaries of farming to alert us to the power of forces outwith our control.

Source author: Biljana Scott biscott@diplomacy.edu